Loyalty
by Her Excellency
Summary: In which the main character tries to convince himself that he was doing the Right Thing. "Really, it was just a matter of whether or not I loved her enough to let her go," he says to Remus, though he doesn't expect him to understand.


CHAPTER 1

Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters or any of the settings (in this chapter)….

Please don't kill me.

"She (Lily) was a popular girl, and that is relevant. But I think you've seen that already. She was a bit of a catch." JK Rowling, MN/TLC interview

Prologue

Sirius, you know, had only crossed the line once, and he had hated himself for it. He couldn't do that to James. He had always been a stickler for loyalty.

CHAPTER 1(Years 1 and 2)

IN THE BEGINNING…

It had begun really in the first year for her, not some random day in the beginning of the seventh year, like everyone had thought. The first year, though she would never let anyone know it, least of all James. Probably not even herself. She was stubborn.

He had never really liked winter, but Lily would have to disagree. While other gardeners hated it, Lily loved winter. She assumed the dislike sprang from the fact that very little grew in winter, but this was not a problem that affected her. Lily could make anything bloom no matter the time nor the flower. She was tending the rosebushes, which were in full bloom. He had thought that was weird, but he hadn't thought much of it, not being much of a gardener himself. All he had really thought of was that her hair was as red as fire and he had to come closer to see whether or not it really was.

It would later remind him of the way a moth was drawn toward a flame. He would come to wonder whether or not moths get burned.

It seemed likely.

"Don' they have people who do that?"

"To do what?" she had asked.

"Fix the flowers."

"They'll die in the winter if I don't."

"That's not your problem. Anyway, they can probably put some spell on it to keep it okay."

"Probably," she had agreed. She had smiled, and it had blinded him.

"How can you keep them alive anyway?"

"I've always been good with plants," she had muttered, embarrassed.

"So good that you can defy the weather and the laws of nature?" He didn't really care about her horticultural talents, merely why she was so embarrassed by them. She only nodded, so he tried another. "Tell me your secret."

"It's quite simple, really. I believe in them, so they believe in themselves."

"So expectations really do count, then." He hadn't quite believed it. He had defied nearly all of his family's expectations, he reasoned, why on earth would anyone else's expectations matter to him? Many years later, he had theorized that it happened not because they believed in themselves, but because they felt that an early death would have been better than having disappointed her.

He could sympathize.

"What's your name then, miracle worker?"

"Lily," she had said, "Lily Evans."

"How appropriate, a flower."

"And you?"

"Oh," he muttered. He wondered if he would recognize his last name, but then he decided it was worth the risk. He smiled. "Sirius Black."

She would have responded, but when he smiled at her she was lost.

She had seen him before, but never without the other one… The other one had brown hair and was very different.

He had been mean to Sev on the train, but she believed in second chances.

Third chances, though…that was another story.

Isn't it always, she thought.

He didn't remember her, but she didn't expect him to. He would miss that, the no expectations.

He would miss a lot of the things about Lily.

Not all of them would be bad.

Lily learned about flowers from her mother, who was a florist. Her mother had taught her about what each flower stood for, but Lily had not liked the fact that the flowers had to be killed. She took to gardening. She did however remember what each flower symbolized. Zinnias meant thoughts of friends, and star of Bethlehems meant hope.

At times, Lily liked to categorize people into flowers, sometimes even situations. Sirius, she had come to think, was a delphinium, which symbolized boldness. He used to sit next her when she pored over her flower books. "Larkspur is what you are," he told her, "it means beautiful spirit." She had only blushed, but the comparison was accurate. And also, besides their accurate symbology, they looked remarkably similar too. It was theorized that they were once the same flower, separated only by time.

Sirius Black had never really believed in luck. Well, not for him anyway. It was unlucky, so you could say, that he had the family he did. That he lived the life he did. The only really lucky thing that had happened to him was that he got sorted into Gryffindor, but then he had asked. James didn't like him very much at first, but he had barely known him. So he didn't really think it was lucky when he fell in love. He was absolutely certain that it was a curse and not a blessing. Later, he would look back and wonder if that was what did it; since he believed it was bad it became so. Lily had always explained to him the power of positive thinking. It stood to reason that it would work both ways.

Whyever James Potter had fallen in love with Sirius's love, it had all went downhill from there.

There is nothing quite like waking up and realizing that is the last thing you wanted to do.

There is also nothing like being told you are going to have to stay up anyway, as Sirius is the first boy to ever get into the Girls dormitories, and he really, really, wants to talk to you.

However, if you had asked Lily Evans how she would feel in such a situation, she would tell you exactly, having experienced it.

She would not be too pleased about it, you could imagine.

And she would go on to tell the whole story, which would probably go like this, if she wished to stick to the facts, and not dramatize, for effect. Which would be such a Sirius thing to do.

"Sirius, it's three in the morning." She attempted to rub the sleep out of her eyes, which didn't work at all, and Lily decided she would never use the saying, or think it ever again.

Rationality is hard to achieve this early in the morning.

"Well, actually, it's 3:39, but as you've just woken up I'll forgive you for such an infraction." Lily had just taught him the word infraction, and she wished she hadn't, as she would many other things involving Sirius.

"How very kind of you, Sirius. But regardless of the exact time, it is still way too early for Lily, so she's gonna go to sleep now."

"Wait, it's …" he started.

"Are you prolonging this for dramatic effect, because, if you are, I can appreciate much better tomorrow."

"It _is_ tomorrow. Besides, there's a…"

"Sirius, I'm serious."

"I would know."

"Shut up, so I can go to sleep!"

"Shh, I want to know if you want to go to the…" Sirius whispered so low that Lily could only hear some of what he said, "…awder ….eeting."

"Sirius, why on earth would I want to go to a lauder beating, at three in the morning?"

"It's three-thirty-ni-

"Shut up!"

"Sorry. What's a lauder?"

"A Scottish ballad singer."

"What?"

"Sirius, I know they can be quite bad, but that doesn't justify violence."

"_What_ are you talking about?"

"The lauder beating."

"The _what_?" he was laughing so hard you could barely hear it, and he looked like he was having some kind of seizure.

"This is getting old quickly, Sirius."

"I was not suggesting we go to any type of beating, Lily, Scottish or otherwise. I wanted to know if you wanted to got to the…" Sirius stopped as if he was about too lower his voice when Lily interrupted saying: "Don't you dare, Sirius Black."

"Shh," he said, " the Marauder meeting."

"Ask me when I'm conscious."

"Lily, it was five minutes ago. It's now or never." Lily filed that second phase into the folder of expression she would never use in her life, along with the other.

"Fine," she said. "Where is it?

"Not too far from here."

"Sirius?" she asked.

"Yeah?"

"What's a Marauder?"

He only smiled.

Lily had figured Sirius' friends were going to pull a prank on Halloween, but she had not figured it would be so extreme.

Turning everything at the Slytherin table including the people, a sickly green would take some impressive spell work, and the best potions the Gryffindor house had to offer.

They had someone else on the spells, a third-year, Lily thought, but Lily was the one in charge of potions. It was a rational choice, for Lily was the head of her Gryffindor class in Potions.

Head of Slytherin potions was Severus, not that she thought Sirius would make the connection.

Severus was willing to make the potions for her, even if she would not tell them what they were for. Severus probably would have done anything for her.

She had thanked him, and advised him to be a little late for the Halloween feast.

She had watched the looks on their (rather green) faces, and chuckled. No one would expect her but Severus, and he would not tell anyone.Professor Dumbledore had laughed, but the Marauders (as Lily had learned they were called) had cracked up.Her daring, her courage, would be something Lily attributed to Sirius for the rest of her life.

Crushes, you may already know, are stupid things.

Well, Sirius thought so, anyway.

First of all, the name. It sounds like you'll immediately need some type of very-serious sounding emergency surgery, and even after that you have a fifty/fifty chance of recovery.

Ouch, right?

Second, it's just stupid. And hasn't anyone noticed that no one remembers when exactly the crush started. Or (and Sirius though this was even weirder) no one even remembers when they realized they had a crush. They just kind of carry it with them, as if they hadn't even realized it was in their hand all along.

The whole thing annoyed Sirius, so he wasn't at all pleased when he discovered that he had a crush on Lily.

Sirius had been afraid to tell James that he liked Lily, because he feared he wouldn't like her. "What do you think of Evans?" he had asked.

"She's okay." This answer had devastated Sirius, even though James had not been paying much attention when giving it. No opinion was more important to Sirius than James's. For the next several weeks Sirius pointed out things he liked about Lily, in an attempt to sway him from his indifference. It worked too well.

For the rest of his life Sirius had to accept that it was his fault, really, no matter how much he wished it otherwise.

It was childish, of course but he was young. He didn't "hand over" Lily, as she would put it, simply because he had gotten there first. While Sirius could, he would cling to his childhood, simply because he had so little before. First.

As his brother had often said to him, finders keepers.

Lily had not always been outgoing.

In fact that aspect of her personality was another thing she thought she owed, in its entirety, to Sirius.

Not that he would ever have any idea, of course.

"Lily," he had asked her, "how come you're so quiet?"

Sirius was an extrovert; he didn't understand why Lily was so quiet. Lily had no idea how to respond to such a question, so she had merely shrugged. The bell rang and the conversation had been dropped, but it would be brought up again later.

"I hate Defense Against the Dark Arts," someone had whispered to whoever was sitting next to them, and at that moment Lily would have to agree. The teacher was crazy uptight and seemed intent on torturing the students, during those few hot days before the end of the year. He seemed to believe it was cooler with the doors and windows closed. Lily had left for the bathroom and she could swear the opposite was true. She imagined she sort of knew what hell felt like.

While Lily was nearly dying in the heat, Sirius was nearly dying for another reason. James was deliberating passing Lily a note, but he would not tell him what it said. James had sent her a folded up piece of parchment and then passed it to Sirius to be passed to Peter to eventually be passed to Lily. Sirius, with a quick swish of the wand, replaced it with a similar looking but blank piece of paper and then obediently passed it on under James's gaze. "To Lily," he told Peter.

Watching it make its way in a sort of zigzag, for reasons Sirius couldn't understand, became a small amusement during the usually, (and this time, particularly) dull, class-is-almost-over, period of the day. "To Lily," could be heard as a sort of symphony, and Sirius considered conducting with his finger.

He shook his head, and decided the heat was getting to him.

Someone whispered, "I need paper," to the person sitting next to him, and then was handed the much-circulated piece of paper.

"Thanks," he had said, mistaking it as a gift.

James groaned, and Sirius shook in silent laughter.

"You just wait, Padfoot." He instructed. "I'll kill you at chess."

"I'm so scared."

James decided to try again. He watched the note travel one-fourth of the way through class, but then fell under the spell of the heat, and fell asleep. This left Sirius to watch the teacher follow the note through the class with his eyes, and then intercept it when it reached its final destination, unnoticed by Lily, who was looking out the window.

"Miss Evans, what is your opinion on note passing?"

"I'm sorry?"

"I asked you what your opinion on note passing was."

"I think it would depend on the situation."

"Fine. Then I'll clarify. During one of the few classes I have with you before the exams, when reviewing material that the majority of the class has failed to understand, at three in the afternoon? In other words, Lily, now."

"I think it would distract you from your studying, I guess."

"And you find your studies important, do you, Miss Evans?"

"Yes, sir."

"Because the note on your desk would suggest otherwise."

"What?" She looked down, "Oh."

"Let me make myself clear, note passing will not be tolerated in my classroom. You get a detention for this. If I see anything like this again, it will be a week. Class dismissed."

In Muggle school, Lily had learned about the moon, at first like everyone else she assumed the light it gave off was it's own, similar to the sun. But she was deceived.

Because, really, the light from the moon was a reflection from the sun's. She was stunned. She was amazed by the fact that the light was not the moon's, that the sun still had a presence, that it still affected everything, even when it was gone. That one could become bright simply because someone else's light was shining on you.

Lily had always loved the sun.

"Why didn't you say something?"

"What?"

"Why didn't you say something? When the teacher was arguing with you."

"I… don't know."

And then Lily swore to herself that the next time something happened she would say something about it, so that no one would be left without a voice.

She had been thinking of Sirius, whose voice could not be heard in his own family, and of Remus who would not even let himself have a voice.

And with that Lily left her quiet ways behind her, so that the person she once was only became a memory.

"Goodbye, Sirius."

"Goodbye, Lily," and an idea occurred to him, as he was watching James try to capture Lily's attention, and he really, really, hoped it would go away.

(He succeeded, for a while, but it would come back in the 4th year.

I don't even want to think about 5th year.)

AN: This chapter is maybe the longest I have ever written, and it definitely took me the longest to write. 2 weeks, but that includes a lot of the other chapters, as I didn't write the events in order. I can tell you right now how the story ends, but I have no idea how on earth I am going to be able to write 3rd and 4th year.

If you write your story the way time naturally progresses, you are so, so, lucky.

-Rant Over-

Please review. Do not assume everyone else has reviewed. They haven't. If I suck, I would really, really, like to know.

(WARNING) Peter will play a role in this story (though not a favorable one). If you hate Peter, you need to get over it, or stop reading this story.

You'll never know how it ends, though.

Also. Snape will play a role in this story. But not an entirely unfavorable one.

Now I am done.

I think.

Wait. Next chapter will be called A Rat, a Snake, a Wolf… and sometimes a Stag.


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